insurance problems

[Leslilake1 at aol.com]

Went to pay my car insurance bill today, and in the course of discussing why 
my rates were increasing despite clean record, my agent told me that Allstate 
would be "firing" all of its agents by next year - and nobody knows exactly 
what's going to happen after that - their services to be replaced by the 
Internet, possibly.  He also said that he wasn't able to write policies for 
80% of the business that walked in his door because of credit problems.  And 
that he had had to lay off all of his staff except his wife because of his 
margins being squeezed by Allstate.  And that - I didn't get the details of 
this - that the insurance business was in big trouble generally, not only 
Allstate, and there were going to be big rate hikes next year.  I had to stop 
talking because there were people waiting behind me - does anybody have any 
background on this?

LJ